“Who the fierfek are they?”
“I don't know! I'm not a mind-reader and if you'd just shut up because I'm trying to concentrate on flying and listening and—” His voice trailed off. “Just aim.”
Fi pressed his blaster harder into the woman's head. She flinched and shut her eyes tight. He could feel no emotion whatsoever, just the cold clarity of his life and his comrades' against her existence, and it seemed an easy equation.
“Move and you're dead, ma'am, okay?” Move? Even Fi wasn't sure he could make an escape from a speeder moving this fast and this erratically—and not at this height, either. “Start thinking of all the helpful information you're going to give us.”
Jusik broke from the automated lane and fell another five levels like a stone, drawing screaming protests of klaxons as he skimmed other vessels. But the speeder dropped with them, delayed only by a few seconds. Then he banked right into a service vessel tunnel, and Fi had no idea where they were. It was enclosed. And that was bad. Fi wasn't a pilot but flying fast down a tube struck him as suicide.
“Look, I know where I'm heading,” Jusik said, as if he were suddenly telepathic. Fi wondered if he had protested aloud and hadn't realized. “I know. And they can't get a signal through down here.”
And then he fell silent. And this was where it became very, very frightening to have a Jedi on the squad, because Jusik had shifted from a skill that Fi could see to something beyond his comprehension.
Jusik was now skimming a meter above the surface of a conduit lit at regular intervals by a dim green light. Sev was struggling to get a steady shot through the narrow opening in the rear screen. All Fi could do was watch one madman or the other while he held a gun to a woman's head, and Fi didn't enjoy not being in control of his environment. He thought of Sicko again and the moment when he and Omega were helpless and utterly dependent on that pilot's skill. Poor Sicko.
“Sev, he's twenty meters behind us, right?” said Jusik.
“Spot on.”
“Are you going to be ready when I say fire?”
“Try me.”
“Only on my mark.”
“Get on with it, sir.”
Fi felt his left arm going numb around the woman's neck, and he struggled to keep the blaster hard against her head. The taxi was veering from side to side. “I just hope they're not CSF.”
“They're not ours … ,” Sev said. “And they're in pursuit. So they're a target.”
Fi dug the blaster into the woman's skin. “Are they your people, ma'am?”
“I don't know! I don't know!”
“If they are, it's too bad,” Sev said. “We can't let them track us back.”
Jusik speeded up. “Stand by.”
Fi noticed that he had his eyes shut again.
“Fierfek.”
“Fire!” Jusik said, and the taxi suddenly flipped up ninety degrees and climbed in an agonizing vertical. Fi braced for impact.
They had to be dead.
But the taxi was still climbing.
They were in a vertical shaft and a ball of blue-white flame roared beneath them. Fi was thrown against Sev but he locked his arm tight around the woman's neck, and all three of them hit the partly open rear screen as the sound of ricocheting debris faded behind them in the service duct.
The light dimmed fast beneath them and suddenly disappeared as Jusik slammed the taxi into another right angle and they were flying horizontally along a channel again.
“Target down.” Sev shut his eyes.
“That better not be CSF,” Fi said. “That's going to be very messy.”
Suddenly they were bathed in hazy sunlight. Jusik brought them out into passenger traffic and slipped into the automated lanes of private speeders again.
“What do we look like from the outside now?” Sev asked.
Jusik wiped his forehead with his palm and looked as breathless and battered as he ever had after performing the Dha Werda. Fi could have sworn he looked just as elated, too.
“Family of Garqian tourists with a Gran driver,” the Jedi said. “Now let's try to explain this to you-know-who without getting our heads ripped off.” He opened his comlink. “Returning with a prisoner, Kal.”
Sev grumbled in his throat. “Never use real names.”
“Least of our worries now,” Fi said.
So Jusik was scared of Skirata, too. It was supposed to be a quiet ohs job, as he'd put it, observation duty; it had turned into kidnapping and blowing up unidentified vessels. Scared wasn't the right word, though.
He'll be disappointed with us. We let him down.
Fi, like anyone who came into Skirata's circle, desperately wanted Kal'buir to be proud of him. It was more effective motivation than fear any day.
“Remember he even shoves Wookiees around,” said Fi. He adjusted his grip on the woman's neck to stop the tingling in his fingers. “And they take it.”
The taxi was silent except for the occasional whimpering gulp from Jiss and the rumble of the vessel's hard-pressed drive. Eventually Jusik came to a shuddering halt on the platform at the top level of Qibbu's Hut. Sev called on his comlink for a hand with the woman, and Atin came running out with Fixer.
“What have you been playing at? Skirata's going nuts in there.” Atin slid into the taxi and put cuffs on Jiss. “Get out and we'll take her to the safe house. You've got some explaining to do.”
Safe house for them, maybe. Safe for her? No. But then she had picked the wrong side. She wasn't a helpless victim.
So much for whining that we never get to see the enemy.
The taxi lifted off, leaving Fi, Sev, and Jusik standing on the platform, exhausted by adrenaline.
“Thank you for flying Jedi Air.” Jusik grinned, and shook their hands. “Have a nice afternoon.”
“You're all insane,” said Sev, and stalked off.
12
Definitely not one of our speeders, Kal. Look, I know why you think I don't need to know what your boys are getting up to. But someone's going to notice you blew up their people. And so is CSE. What do you want me to tell them?
–Captain Jailer Obrim, to Kal Skirata
Operational house, Qibbu's Hut, 1600 hours, 380 days after Geonosis
“You're sure nobody followed you?” Skirata said quietly.
The strike team, minus. Ordo, was assembled in the main room, sitting where they could. For a moment Skirata was distracted by the way Darman and Etain were positioned. It told him something, but he had more pressing issues right now.
He'd calmed down, too. Red Watch was back safely. Jusik, predictably, was taking his roasting like a man.
“I'm sure, Kal. I felt it.”
“Don't go mystic on me. Did you go through the procedures? Give me tangibles.”
“I didn't return via a direct route. I looped back on myself several times. Nothing.”
There was no point yelling at them. Skirata knew he probably would have done the same. It was all very well to talk about painstaking surveillance and meticulous planning before resolving a threat, but when a truly ripe target walked in front of your scope—no, he would have done the same.
And he was simply relieved that they'd made it back in one piece.
“Okay, surveillance is off for the day. We change vehicles again, and we'll start defense watches, just in case the Force has deceived Bard'ika and we've got a load of bad guys on our case now. Enacca is identifying a second location we can pull back to if this place is compromised.”
Jusik looked crushed. “I'm sorry, Kal.”
“You weren't in command. I should have made sure you were ready for this.” Skirata turned to Fi and Sev. Fi looked crestfallen; Sev was complete blank insolence. “And what have you two got to say for yourselves?”